Confusión grafemático-fonológica en las silibantes, según documentación inédita de la Baja-Navarra (siglos XIV-XV)

Abstract

As is well known, one of the characteristic features of Spanish is the way it altered a series of medieval sibilants that were shared from the XII to the XV centuries by Portugese, Catalan, French and Occitane.

Unlike these languages, Spanish in the XVI and XVII centuries opted to differentiate the apico-aveolars from the laminar dentals, with the result that these became one interdental phoneme // whose articulation was separated as far as possible from the old dorso-palatals which became in turn the velar fricative /X/.

This accused phenomenen took place slowly over a period comprising of centuries, with the loss of the corresponding voiced sounds, without doubt due to the Basque influence, being particularly remarkable.

The data offered in this article strengthens this argument.